Warning(s): Tablo over-thinking, weirdness
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Humor, Bromance
Word Count: 1800~
Pairing: Tablo/Taeyang
Summary: The shooting of Tomorrow, Tablo overthinking, sand-filled shoes, and Taeyang looking good in jeans.
Cars - worth more than his apartment, he’s sure - zoom past him. Dust flies up and he’s not sure if that second he’s coordinated to the song. He was a bit too busy spluttering out sand. That, and he can’t actually hear the music over the helicopter flying haphazardly above him. He’s just trying to recall the lyrics in his head, shaking his hands in indication that there is no tomorrow.
A car - the red one, he notes with a memo to see who’s driving behind those tinted windows; he’d bet anything it’s that one guy that had been glaring at him since he stepped in YG’s building - makes a close cut to him. The tires spit sand up at him. He regrets suggesting this idea. He regrets his need for enunciation (unlike rappers he’s had the misfortune of listening to, who treat their lyrics with no acknowledgement, muttering them and trying to cover them up with thudding bass) because the wider he opens his mouth, the more he tastes it. It’s likely wedged in there pretty good. Hye-Jeong will kiss him and taste desert for weeks.
He keeps up his vague gesturing a few more minutes, but then the director calls for a break because the camera’s are smeared and they need to wipe down the cars again. Make them look all shiny. Like they’re the clients. No one comes over to offer him water or powder or even a sympathetic look even though he’s been, hello, walking in the sun for a good twenty minutes.
He walks a bit further, plopping down in a chair stationed in the makeshift gallery. There’s even a makeup table a few feet away, lights blaring. (Though he has no idea where the electricity is coming from, high education or no.) He pulls his right boot off with some difficulty. The soles are caked with sand and sweat, and the combo might not sound that great, but it feels even worse.
He’s wriggling his fingers in the bottom of his shoe when a water bottle appears in eyesight. He looks up and sees the increasingly familiar nervous twitch manifest itself in Taeyang’s smile. It would be cute, he thinks, if it came on someone like Eunhyuk. (Not that it’d look that good on Eunhyuk now, he muses. Too much muscle and exhaustion.) The effects are lessened when it’s on a mini-hulk, forehead dotted with perspiration and eyes hidden from view. The one time Taeyang isn’t required to wear sunglasses for a music video and he clings to them every moment outside shooting.
He accepts the bottle, putting aside his boot for a second to gulp down a third of the container. It’s cold and looses some of the grit hanging to the back of his teeth. He nods his appreciation.
“Need help, hyung?”
Taeyang throws a glance to his other boot. He eyes it warily as well. He puts down the water to attempt pulling it off, but no. It’s pretty much stuck on there for the rest of his life, thank you very much.
“Thanks.”
Taeyang smiles a bit as he crouches down, giving a few solid tugs to the boot. It budges, but not enough to peel off. The younger male looks considering before rolling his shoulders. He gives it another go. He succeeds.
“You can just leave it there. I’ll-“
But Taeyang is already proving just how nice he is (why G-Dragon refuses to let his best friend near newcomers without his permission), producing a pack of sanitary wipes and gouging at the insides of Tablo’s boots. Tablo shrugs, getting back to his footwear as well. It’s a few moments spent in comfortable silence. It’s a bit odd to be cleaning out his shoes with someone he’s had few words with - outside of discussions on this collaboration and general introductions. Perhaps Taeyang is regularly recruited into such tasks?
“Laces,” Taeyang says, smiling and indicating his own pair of boots. They’re partially tucked into his pants, laced up tighter than an unstable psychotic in a hospital ward. “And skinny jeans. They keep stuff from getting in shoes.”
Tablo’s eyes had not been focused there - there being Taeyang’s legs - but he can appreciate the suggestion. They’re nice enough.
“Learned that after Love Song’s shooting.” There’s a jerk to his smile that vaguely signals mischief. “Besides, you’d be surprised what fans can throw that gets stuck in your shoes.”
The elder nods absently. It’s amusing but he’s not sure if he should laugh. He’s heard Taeyang has this whole self-deprecating humor thing and he’s pretty sure that would be ruined if he laughed at his jokes.
Honestly, he’s always been unsure when it came to idol life, and he expected it to be even more difficult after joining YG because, yeah, they kinda do breed idols instead of musicians, but he’d had no idea it involved this kind of intricacy. He joined for the freedom! Not to get a course on how to interact with some of the most creatively volatile people he’s met since that hoity-toity art convention with the portraits of poodles and monochromatic canvases that were supposed to ‘speak to the soul’. (Try hip-hop, geezers.)
It just needs some adjustment, he decides. Though he’s not sure if he wants to adjust. (Just last week, G-Dragon asked for some of his wife’s maternity clothes for ‘fashion’s cause’. And then TOP ran into him and asked if he could, y’know, sneak some alcohol into their dorm. They’re kinda not allowed to until all the other drama blows over.)
The fancy cars, the excessive money probably going into helicopter rental (unless YG is kicking up enough money with the artists that they just happen to have a helicopter right there for miscellaneous use), the odd dance moves Taeyang can’t seem to refrain from inserting - those aren’t him. The words are. The music is. The ideas and setting and feelings. Those are him. Those are his work.
“Do you understand the meaning?” he asks the young man at his feet, trailing off with vague gesticulation to the place where he had been standing minutes ago, rattling off words through a veil of sand. The other blinks at him, he thinks, because there’s the slightest movement behind the shades.
“Of the song?” Tablo nods. “It’s love, right?”
Tablo rolls his eyes as discreetly as he can while brushing his fringe back. He might’ve hoped, coming from someone who sung of the complexities of not wanting to see a woman walking down the aisle for anyone but him, that he would have a better grasp. But then again, he did also sing about love at first sight, which as far as he was concerned, was a sweet lie of poetic impossibilities. He liked prose, but sense and fantasy coming together was what made works stick with a person.
He opened his mouth, ready to launch into a synopsis. He occasionally took it upon himself to educate the younger generation when he could, before they poisoned the business with more syrupy nonsense and meaningless three-word phrases. (Eunhyuk had been one of the receivers of such a lecture, looking torn between a confused puppy that dimly suspected they were getting insulted and a rabid fan that was just so ecstatic you deigned to talk to them.)
“The guy can’t get over the girl. She’s cold, treating their breakup like an event from the past. But for him there’s no tomorrow after it.” Taeyang looks up at him and his wide-eyed stare must be enough to convince him to continue because he does. “His friends tell him that he has a future outside of that relationship, that he looks better without her, but it makes no impact on him.”
There’s a space of a few moments, stillness as they both stare at each other.
“But it’s not like I understand everything,” Taeyang rushes to explain, as if understanding every bit of Tablo’s soul would somehow be an insult to how artistic he is. That may be true of G-Dragon, who specializes in the indistinct and misconstrued, but he craves others to comprehend. “‘Go away because time walks; Live on because a man breathes’. I don’t fully get that but… It’s the woman’s thoughts, right? That she can do whatever she wants because you’re alright?”
Tablo is considering how to praise the singer when the director yells for cameras to start rolling again. (He comes up with patting his cheeks, like he does with Eunhyuk, or his head, but either way he’s going to make enemies of the cordi-noona’s fluttering nearby them.) He pats Taeyang on the shoulder as he brushes past.
He watches as Taeyang sings to the camera, voice projecting clear despite the speakers, the helicopter, the cars. The younger male jumps around, scuffing his shoes in sand as he dances, kicking up another storm in the absence of the vehicles. He’s conveying frustration, Tablo realizes, and can’t help a small smile because finally someone gets it.
A few takes later and his shoes are full of half the desert again. He makes quick steps into the helicopter and then plops down. Taeyang’s a few steps behind. The chopper starts to lift as soon as they’re both secured. (He notices that the guy that had been glaring at him is actually the pilot, not the red car’s driver. He wonders just how many enemies he’s making with this path. Whatever. Let them reign arrows if it brings one more victory to hip-hop’s name.)
“Hyung,” Taeyang breathes. Tablo looks up from where he had been inconspicuously examining the fibers of the younger’s skinny jeans. His cheeks heat up a bit, but then he remembers how naïve everyone say he is. All the better; all his smart dongsaeng quickly learn of how awkward he is. “I like it. This song.”
“Yeah?”
Taeyang nods, slow smile easing onto his lips. Tablo lets himself reciprocate, clapping the other on the shoulder. His gaze turns to the landscape they’re leaving behind. The sun’s still high. They’ve finished shooting quicker than he thought. (It’s probably the subtracted element of a certain DJ, he thinks.)
He’s going to need more than tomorrow and the next day to adjust to all this. (Tomorrow, incidentally, being the day he’s supposed to get tutored by Daesung on how to conduct oneself on variety programs. Because apparently strapping on a bee costume and letting things play out isn’t good enough anymore. Now he needs ‘finesse’.)
But it’s cool. His lyrics might be stuck in a point in time, but he’s moving forward. One sand-gummed foot in front of the other, dirt lodged in his throat but words flowing purposely. Because there is a tomorrow and the next day.
--
Tablo/Taeyang makes so much sense to me…! Tablo’s all awkward but he likes for people to think he’s cool. Taeyang is too sheltered (by G-Dragon) and naïve to know that ‘this hyung is weird’. Tablo is all about music and preaching to the next generation about quality. Taeyang likes to do things cleanly and is so eager to please and seems like someone who listens to every critique and takes it to heart. If ever a pimp post for this pairing shows up, there’s a 50% chance it’ll be mine. Or at least have a frothing fanatic comment attached to it by me.
...But now I'm a bit embarrassed to be so gung-ho about it.
...What should we call this pairing...? TaTa?